Mortavath was a thief.
She wasn't the dramatic, cloaked figure of stories, no. She was just a cold, habitual thief who took whatever she pleased without asking, without apology. Without ever caring what it meant to the person left behind. She had stolen Timoth. And in doing so, Mortavath[1] had once again left this woman alone in this pathetic world. For that, she deserved to be punished.
"Hmm. Does she really?"
A voice that had stayed silent since she was a child finally spoke up, shattering the dark quiet of Ratelsi's subconscious. Inexorable. Sovereign. Yet mocking and maddeningly calm. The contrast of the immortal king's voice was sickening.
"Aren't you wrongly faulting the goddess of death for this atrocity?"
Maybe he was right. Maybe she was losing her mind. But… but Timoth was dead. Huddled over his cold body, Ratelsi's bright eyes, dimmed to a blackened green, burned with venomous grief. Her blood-stained fingers absentmindedly traced the familiar contours of his face while her soul remained trapped in an emotional maelstrom. Sadness mutated into rage; grief curdled into a desperate desire for blood. Someone in this room had to answer for Timoth's life!
"Ah, yes! Revenge! Hahaha!"
His laughter echoed inside her skull, dark and gleeful. He savoured her agony, drinking in her sorrow, manipulating her rage to reclaim the seat of power he once held inside her mind so many years ago. "Just let me in, Ra-tel-si,"he crooned, mocking her with her own name. "You need me. You know you do. More than you did that night when you were just a helpless child. Mama's little girl. Haha!"
The entity cackled, fanning the flames of her hatred, twisting her sorrow into something rotten and violent. For years, she'd kept him locked away, smothered beneath her effortful discipline. But as soon as the maelstrom of her emotions smashed into his anticipating ones, she desired to let him in. Ratelsi eased her subconscious, unlocking it, surrendering it to his corruption. She wanted his power. Grief had stripped her of her own, so she needed his strength. She would use every drop of his malice to tear them apart!
He's dead. He's dead. They took him. Wake up. WAKE UP - No. Gone. Gone. WHO DID THIS? Find them. Squeeze their hearts until they burst! Tear the flesh off their bones! BLOOD FOR BLOOD! I want their blood on my hands. I want to hear them scream! SLAUGHTER THEM. MAKE THEM BLEED. MAKE THEM PAY! REVENGE REVENGE REVENGE! THEY HAVE TO DIE. KILL THEM ALL! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Instantly, the atmosphere went ice-cold.
KA - THOOM!
A towering geyser of pitch-black and emerald aura burst outward from her core in a violent shockwave. Having sensed the catastrophic shift in a split second before it hit, Ryken threw himself over Seraph, sheltering her with his own body as the explosive gale tore through the penthouse. He fought the force, jamming his fingers into the cracks in the wall until his knuckles turned white and his heels skidded.
"What is that?!" Seraph called out, fingers clinging to the front of Ryken's shirt.
Ryken's amethyst eyes burned like twin coals. "That, my dear," he purred, a triumphant grin splitting his features, "is a Mawborn finally opening the door to her patron god."
Snigel tackled Broco behind a pillar just as Styx and Vesir braced against the sudden force, dodging flying debris, corpses and shattered glass. The raw, kinetic pressure reverberated through Hexoset, sending Macaque and the surrounding crowd lunging for anything bolted down. As if that wasn't enough, the air plunged into a bone-chilling freeze, turning Macaque's next breath into a cloud of mist as he rubbed his shivering shoulders.
"W-what was that? An earthquake?" he muttered, then yelled to a waitress. "Marleen, did someone turn off the thermostat?!"
A loud crash of pint glasses shattered against the floor, and the corner walls began cracking in long, spiderwebbing veins. Ratelsi's explosive aura rattled Hexoset's structural bones, detonating the power grid and plunging the entire complex into pitch darkness. On the main club floor, the music died abruptly, immediately replaced by a muffled chorus of confused, rising voices as drunken patrons wondered what had happened to the lights, completely unaware of the ancient entity that had just awakened above them.
Meanwhile, the marble beneath Ratelsi's knees fractured like ice over a frozen lake, running through the lounge. Everything made of glass - the already shattered window, sconces, the bioluminescent table, the wine flutes, the penthouse's roof - shattered into a fine mist under the sheer density of her aura. Yet, at the center of this destruction, Ratelsi's hands never left Timoth's face. The gale-force shockwave tore around his body, leaving him completely untouched, unlike everything else in its path.
Slowly raising her head, burning malachite eyes found the culprit, the fool who committed this sin.
Broco cowered behind the thick marble pillar with Snigel's massive frame pressed to his, blocking her glare. Still, he kept his trembling eyes squeezed shut, unable to bring himself to behold the monster he'd unleashed - but he felt her. Her murderous intent radiated off the walls like heat. She was looking at him. Coldly. Maliciously. Promising a slow, horrific execution. Broco's breath hitched, his chest heaving in ragged gasps, sweat mixing with the hot tears now spilling down his face. He began weeping like a child, eyes bulging in terror.
"I don't want to die," he sobbed, choking on his own spit. "Please… I don't want to die.."
Averting her gaze from Broco's whimpering form, Ratelsi drew a long feather from the span of her glassy wings and let it drift through the air, guiding it telekinetically until it hovered beside Timoth's corpse. Splaying her bloody fingers, her smoky voice resonated through the gloom in a low, ancient cadence:
"Petra mortis formetur."[2]
The singular blade multiplied into a swarm of gleaming blades, sweeping around her and Timoth before interlocking with fluid precision to forge an ornate casket of solid obsidian glimmering with malachite accents. Her geyser of black-green aura continued to roar around her in rolling waves, yet her movements remained heartbreakingly gentle as she cradled Timoth's weight and lowered his body into the stone's embrace. Stroking his cheek one last time, she whispered. "Sleep now, my love. I'll take care of everything else."
The initial crushing shockwave soon receded, leaving the penthouse's wreckage in still silence. Downstairs, the disoriented crowd stumbling through the blackout were blind to the fact that a power outage was the least of their worries. That minor inconvenience was nothing compared to the divine judgement about to befall the men who had dared to wrong a Mawborn.
Across the nightclub, high above the street on an adjacent roof, the rest of Eliàna's squad felt the air turn dangerously cold. Oberon and Saedi tensed, while back at HQ, Jeenah tracked the atmospheric telemetry spike on her monitors. "It's happening," she whispered in anticipation, mirroring Saedi's stunned whistle. From their vantage point, they were safely beyond the blast zone's radius, yet they saw and felt Ratelsi's ambient magic shudder outward in a massive circle across at least two residential blocks. Window by window, street by street, the surrounding skyline went completely dark.
Up in the penthouse, Ryken stepped back, letting go of Seraph, whose cheeks flushed warm from his sudden proximity. However, the heat evaporated in an instant when Ryken turned his full attention back to Ratelsi. Vesir and Styx picked themselves up from the debris-strewn floor. Snigel dragged a bound, frantic Broco out from behind the marble pillar, but the weeping boss thrashed against his grip, screaming hysterically.
"She'll kill me! Let me go! Don't make me look at her!"
"Ah… a little too late to be aware of that." Ryken mused coldly. Raising his scythe, he aimed the curved blade at the trembling Monger. "Mortavath awaits you in Shimun, human."
Sealing the obsidian casket shut, Ratelsi forced her eyes from her love's resting place to the insect who had destroyed him. Broco let out a high-pitched whimper, squeezing himself tighter into the stone pillar. Now, Ratelsi was angry. She was beyond grief; an unadulterated vengeance. Her immortal king called to her, extending his strength across the void, and she opened her soul to receive him. With his ancient malice woven into hers, she would claim the retribution her soul demanded. Pinning Broco with a gaze so heavy, the Monger couldn't look away from his executioner even if he tried. Slowly, the soles of Ratelsi's boots began lifting from the shattered floor. She spread her arms wide as her body ascended toward the high ceiling, illuminated by the full moon crowning the broken penthouse.
"Timoth was mine, and you snatched him away, as if a parasite like you could ever truly comprehend the value of the relic you stole." Her booming voice was an inhuman echo. She wanted to rip his head off, gouge his eyes out. "You think yourself a player on this stage, yet you dare to lack the spine to look me in the eye after what you've done?"
Black sigils spread from the corners of her lips, swirling onto her cheeks and burning with unholy light as she incanted the sacred words:
"Occupato, Rex Immortalis, Oded."[3]
An arctic chill flooded her veins, draining the human warmth in her flesh into a ghostly ivory before liquid obsidian leaked from her pores. The thick, viscous tar coated her skin, creeping over the soles of her feet up to her collarbone and running down her breasts in weeping trails. Bones cracked, splitting her skull, birthing a pair of long, ribbed, curved horns through her brows. A veil of black tar coated her features, running down her cheeks in weeping trails, emphasizing the burning phosphorescence in her malachite eyes. Ratelsi flexed her elongated black talons before rolling her shoulder blades back. With a thunderous crack, her massive, bladed wings unfurled to their full span of eleven feet across. The residual kinetic force from that movement alone ripped down through the building's steel spine, disorienting the club's patrons downstairs even more as they stumbled against the vibrating ground.
"Whoa, is there an earthquake or something?!" someone yelled over the increasing murmur.
"Don't be stupid," a second voice chided back. "An earthquake? Here?"
Everyone in what was left of the VVIP lounge - especially Ryken, with a wide grin - stared at Ratelsi in stunned, breathless awe. The dominant emotion in the room was reverence as all eyes watched the newly crowned entity hover above them. Her waist-length black-and-white hair billowed in an invisible gale against the full moon. A creature of dark, ancient divinity, the Mawborn was a manifestation of her patron god, Oded, the Obsidian, Immortal King.
Snigel's knees buckled, hitting the marble with a hollow thud. His sidearm slipped from his paralyzed fingers and clattered to the floor. He stared up at the ancient obsidian terror, his mind desperately trying and failing to rationalize what he was seeing. An atheistic Normie, Snigel had never believed in heaven, hell, or the divine. Yet here she stood. Looking upon a true deity in the flesh crumbled every belief he held, leaving him hollowed out by pure dread.
Her transformation complete, Ratelsi descended from the ceiling with effortless grace, hovering just inches above the blood-stained floor. Her burning malachite gaze never strayed from Broco as she began drifting toward him like a shadow over water. The terrified Monger scrambled backwards on his hands and knees, weeping, shaking his head in denial. When Ratelsi glided past Ryken and Seraph, the former instantly dropped to one knee. Without a word, he lowered his head in total submission to the divinity before him, knowing better than to let the awakened being pass by without paying his respects.
She was, after all, a king.
Ratelsi halted her advance, lazily turning her horned silhouette toward him. Her gaze shifted briefly to Seraph, who shuddered beneath the weight of that stare before quickly lowering her eyes and mirroring Ryken's bow. Whoever the Peculiar was at this moment was nothing compared to the divine power before her. Looking down at them, Oded's ancient consciousness intuitively recognized the cosmic signature imprinted into Ryken's soul since his birth, and through Ratelsi's obsidian lips, a sacred name slipped out:
"Tarta."
Ryken's bright purple eyes widened, a thrill running down his spine at the Mawborn's acknowledgement of his own patron deity - Tarta, the Goddess of Liminality and Judgment. Grinning with dark satisfaction, Ryken pressed his palms to the floor and bowed deeper, allowing the immortal king to pass.
Ratelsi drifted to a stop just out of reach from Broco, boring her glowing eyes into his soul. Her inhuman voice rolled through the ruined penthouse, unnatural, coming from everywhere at once, just as a cluster of glassy feathers broke free from her wings and hovered in formation around her.
"Broco Aqqa," she proclaimed condescendingly, "even the soil will vomit up your filth when it drinks your blood. You will die as you lived - a blight upon this earth, leaving a stain so foul that no amount of agony can cleanse."
With a lazy flick of her taloned hand, the floating blades rotated in unison, aligning their gleaming points straight at his joints. Still tightly bound in Seraph's spell, Broco gasped for air, tears cutting through the dust on his face. He gulped, terrified, realizing his inevitable end. Ah, he should've never pulled that trigger. Fuck. Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself to accept his ill fate.
"YOU'RE FORBIDDEN FROM FEELING REMORSE!"
The Mawborn's thunderous roar jolted his eyes wide open, rattling his skull. The entire room shuddered beneath the psychic weight of her rage.
"You dare not attempt to seek peace in your final breath, mortal!"
A single blade shot forward, cleanly severing Seraph's magic bindings and stripping away Broco's last shreds of protection. Before he could fall, the long glass plunged deep into his shoulder joint.
"ARRGGHH!!"
"UGHHH - AAGH!!"
"GROAAAH!"
His shrieks were so agonizingly loud that they made patrons on the floor below cower or cover their ears.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Blade by blade, scream by scream, the floating feathers abandoned their formation, driving themselves into his knees, elbows, hips. By the time the air cleared, Broco was reduced to a mangled, bleeding ruin of flesh, pinned in place by a forest of obsidian metal. His throat was shredded; he couldn't scream anymore. Darkness tugged at the edges of his sight, dimming them into a dull gaze. Yet he remained conscious. Ratelsi's telekinetic precision ensured every blade missed his vital organs. She refused to let Mortavath accept him so easily. His punishment was only beginning.
Broco wheezed softly, warm blood bubbling over his lips onto the floor. Only one thought kept resurfacing: Ah, fuck… I really shouldn't have pulled that trigger.
An eerie quiet blanketed the room. No one dared to challenge the sentence being carried out. What was there to say? Blood was the only currency that could settle this debt, and everyone knew it. Whimpering, Snigel dragged his body backwards along the floor like a wounded animal. His boots slipped in Broco's spreading pool of crimson as he desperately tried to put as much distance as possible between himself and what was left of his boss, terrified that even a misplaced breath would draw Ratelsi's wrathful gaze onto him.
Scowling, phosphorescent malachite eyes burned brighter as Ratelsi raised an open palm. The air responded, humming with kinetic pressure. With a shuddering jerk, Broco's body was yanked upward. The blades embedded in his joints held fast, suspending him midair like a mutilated martyr. Together, executioner and prey began drifting higher, accelerating toward the roof. They burst into the open sky right above Hexoset. Below them, the sprawling neon skyline of Argona spread out in all its glittering, unfeeling splendour.
"Mhm… a pristine backdrop fitting for an execution."Oded purred in Ratelsi's subconscious. "Satisfied, are we?"
"Satisfied?" She sneered, narrowing her glowing eyes. "Don't make me laugh."
Oded laughed anyway, pulling her lips back in a predatory grin over sharp, elongated canines rimmed in obsidian. Their merged voices boomed into the night sky.
"There will be no mercy for this filth!"
Meanwhile, Eliàna's team moved closer to the nightclub to monitor Ratelsi's ascension through high-powered optics. Saedi, however, tilted her head toward the western skyline. Her mutated, avian eyes zoomed in on a small fleet of incoming Striders Mk. V, their thrusters searing blue-hot streaks through the upper clouds. Saedi hit her earpiece.
"Go for Van Uther," Ryken's smooth voice answered through the static.
"Paladins are dropping in," she reported. "Shouldn't we move in now to secure the Mawborn before they interrupt the operation?"
Oberon swung his binoculars toward Hexoset's main entrance. At least a dozen Striders had already hit the pavement, herding confused partygoers, while patrolling Joji drones scanned the defenestrated corpses, identifying them. Soon enough, the perimeter was secured behind crowd-control holographic barriers. Finding the front doors locked from within, two armoured Paladins aggressively cornered the club bouncers and interrogated them for access.
With nothing left to do in the penthouse, Ryken stepped over the shattered frame of the VVIP lounge and strolled into the hallway. He rested his arms on the upper railing to watch the spectacle unfold below. The disoriented crowd had barely begun waving their flashlights around when the main doors slammed back against the walls, and a squad of twelve Paladins fanned out into the darkness.
The club went wild.
"Shit, it's a raid! Get the stash!"
"I'm on parole, move!"
"Hey - don't push me, man!"
Peculiars activated their abilities in frantic bursts, desperate to escape through the emergency exits from what they thought was a routine raid. At the same time, terrified Normie patrons scrambled over their seats and dropped to the floor, ducking beneath tables, covering their heads. Unfazed by the commotion, the lead Paladin tapped a holographic interface with the Cura's emblem - The Arcane Eye - projecting from his wrist. Instantly, the venue's subwoofers screeched with a piercing alarm. Crimson strobe lights flared rhythmically, blinding the fleeing crowd as the Cura's automated overrides locked down the building. A synthesized voice, cranked to max volume, boomed from the ceiling arrays, freezing everyone.
"ATTENTION, CITIZENS. MANDATORY SECURITY PROTOCOL ENGAGED."
The harsh, automated voice echoed off the concrete walls, drowning out the shouting crowd within seconds.
"By decree of the Cura Supernorum, a full sector evacuation is now in effect. All residents must immediately cease all activity, vacate public and commercial establishments, and return to their designated residential quarters for immediate shelter. This is not a drill. Current projections estimate containment procedures will last precisely one hour. Remain indoors until the all-clear is broadcast across the municipal network. Failure to comply with Paladin security directives will be met with immediate force. Clear the streets. Secure your homes. Now."
Seraph slipped out to join Ryken, pressing shoulder-to-shoulder, just as the warning ended in an ear-splitting klaxon blast. The floor erupted into a stampede, the ground shaking from pounding feet. The Paladins formed a riot wall, escorting sobbing Normies toward the main exits, while Joji drones zipped through the strobe lights, deploying spotlight nets to herd and tag every fleeing Peculiar.
Acknowledging Seraph's presence with a glance, Ryken tapped his comms to answer Saedi's question. "Breach when the main floor is clear," he instructed. "I'll open a portal right on you." Then he placed a palm on the railing, vaulted over the fourth floor and dropped into the open space, landing silently on the main club floor. Seraph followed right behind, descending from balcony to balcony in a series of nimble, calculated leaps before touching down. She fell into step beside him as they strode out into the cool night air.
Out on the street, the evacuating crowd had ground to a halt. Heads tilted upward, thousands of eyes locked onto the two silhouettes hovering high above the club - one a mangled, bleeding mass of meat, the other a terrifying, winged being. A wave of panicked murmurs rippled through the mass. Patrons began pointing, while frantically pulling out their InterCells to record the spectacle.
Glancing at the sea of glowing screens, Seraph leaned toward Ryken. "They're broadcasting. This entire operation is about to go viral on the Mesh."
Ryken scoffed, continuing his steady walk straight toward the front of the crowd where the Paladins were systematically sorting Normies from Peculiars. "The operation stopped being discreet the moment Mhode was thrown out the window," he said.
Noticing the approaching Peculiars, the lead Paladin and his flanker turned around to block their path. Through their golden V-shaped HUDs, the enforcers took in the pair's immaculate, luxurious attire, recognizing instantly that these weren't the desperate street-level mutants they usually collared. Still, a Peculiar was a Peculiar, regardless of wealth. The enforcers crossed their heavy Detonators in a locked X, halting their advance.
"State your names and present your identification brands," the lead Paladin commanded.
Seraph crossed her arms, unimpressed, while Ryken let out a weary sigh. "Every damn time," he muttered, reaching into his pockets. The lead Paladin's posture suddenly went rigid, tightening his grip around the Detonator's trigger. Ryken caught the subtle twitch, chuckled softly as he withdrew his HoloSmart and tapped the screen. The Paladin's HoloSmart chimed with an alert. He looked down, and the shift in his stance, from weariness to ease, was instantaneous. Dropping their Detonators, both enforcers pressed two fingers to their collarbones in a formal salute.
"Forgive the interference, Mr Van Uther. I had no idea PART was leading this operation," the lead Paladin said.
"Ah, think nothing of it," Ryken waved a dismissive hand, placing a single finger over his smirking lips. "As you can see, I'm operating undercover, officer. Call me Traore for tonight. And this is my partner, Cleome."
The Paladin nodded to Seraph, then cast a wary glance up at the winged terror hovering above Hexoset. "Are you handling the threat aloft?"
"Precisely," Ryken replied. "In the meantime, clear the civilians out of the line of fire."
The enforcer saluted again, barking immediate dispersal orders to his squad; then he paused and looked back at Ryken. "I take it your team logged the breach with municipal command? We received the dispatch order from Ms Obidiah."
"Yes, Jeenah must've routed the signal," Ryken said, clapping the Paladin's armoured shoulder. "You've secured the perimeter well, but your shift is done here. We'll take the field from here." With a final salute, the Paladin turned back to the crowd to finish clearing the street.
A thunderous BOOM echoed from Hexoset's upper level, blowing a massive plume of dust and shattered concrete out through the penthouse roof. As the shrieking crowd scrambled to vacate the district, Ryken tilted his head up towards the clouds where Ratelsi hovered. Broco's crucified form was no longer in the sky - he'd been slammed straight down through every floor of the nightclub.
Ratelsi raised a taloned hand, confirming his theory with terrifying grandeur. She telekinetically hauled Broco's body - still pinned by a forest of obsidian blades - back up from the depths of the building, reeling him into the night air. Then, she released her grip.
SLAM!
The mangled body was driven down through the roof again. Lifted. Driven down. Up. Down. Up. Down. She repeatedly smashed him through concrete, stone, and steel, pulverizing what was left of Broco's flesh until he was less of a human being and more of a blood-soaked lump of matter. All the while, a manic grin split Ratelsi's face. She looked utterly radiant in her bloody revenge. But the Monger had long since died from the impacts.
Ryken kept his eyes locked on the sky. Minutes ticked by, but Ratelsi showed no sign of reverting from her Mawborn state. It was becoming painfully clear to Ryken that she had no idea how to undo the transformation.
"Guess this is where I step in," he muttered to himself.
Reaching up, he snagged a passing Joji drone by its antenna and yanked it down until its optical screen aligned with his face. "Jeen, route a few Jojis to Saedi's coordinates. I need her to secure the Mawborn while I keep her occupied."
"Roger that," Jeenah's voice crisped through the unit. The drone flipped out of his grip, zipping up into the dark sky toward Saedi and Oberon, alongside a small cluster of support units.
Seraph tracked their ascent, then turned to Ryken. "What are you about to do, Ryken?" He looked up at Ratelsi, Seraph following his line of sight, and replied, "The only way to pull her back is by introducing an old acquaintance. Someone her patron won't be able to ignore."
Seraph narrowed her eyes, realizing the implication. "You don't mean…"
Ryken met her look with an arrogant smirk. "Yeah. I'm awakening Tarta."
[1] Mortavath is the Goddess of Death in Argona's pantheon.
[2] Translates to "Let the stone of death be formed"
[3] Translates to "Take over, Immortal King, Oded"